Summary:
Prairie River Middle is the only middle school in the Merrill Area School District, so it represents the entire middle-level picture for families in the Merrill area. Located at 106 N Polk St in Merrill, Wisconsin, it serves grades 5 through 8 and enrolls 507 students. With just one middle school in the district, there are no other local middle schools to compare it against — the meaningful comparison is between this school and district and state averages.
Academically, results are mixed. On 2025–2026 Forward Exam proficiency, 5th grade was the clear bright spot: 5th grade ELA was above the state at 54.17% versus 53.63%, and 5th grade math beat the district at 39.17% versus 37.67%. Both improved sharply from the prior year, with ELA up 28.00 points and math up 12.07 points. Eighth grade is the weakest area, where ELA and math both sat at 36.89%, and math fell 14.37 points year over year. Overall, the school was below the district in 9 of 10 tested areas and above the state in only one. Math trails the state by a wider margin than ELA — roughly 16.82 points versus 9.74 points.
Context matters too. The school ranks in the 23rd percentile with 1 star in 2025–2026, down from the 29th percentile three years earlier, even as its unweighted average proficiency improved from 38.65 to 42.88. Chronic absenteeism is 20.3% — roughly 1 in 5 students — above both the district (14.6%) and state (17.3%). The dropout rate of 0.7% is lower than both. Nearly half of students (47.34%) qualify for free/reduced lunch, per-student spending is $16,943, and the student-teacher ratio is 13.3:1.
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